It's Never Home
by Covalent Bond
Summary: 'It's all over now,' she wants to tell him. 'You're going home.' But that would be a lie. It's not over. He's never going home again. Spoilers for the first few minutes of Conspiracy in the Corpse, but nothing about the case or anything that happens after Booth's first morning home.


There was a scene early in the episode that touched me so deeply that I had to write about it. I've held onto this for a couple of weeks thinking I might want to add more but further inspiration has failed me. For now, this is only a one-shot.

**Spoilers** for the _first half_ of **Conspiracy in the Corpse** are contained herein, but nothing about the case or anything that happens after Booth's first day home.

~Q~

_"They give you a garbage bag to carry all your stuff, like they're telling you everything you own is garbage. And then you have to go to a new school in clothes that smell like garbage bags. … They bounce you from place to place, and it's never home. Sometimes the foster parents are nice…."_

-Temperance Brennan, A Boy in a Bush

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><p>~Q~<p>

**It's Never Home**

~Q~

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><p>She sees herself in his eyes.<p>

The broken man walks slowly towards her, carrying his few belongings in a bag at his side and moving just as painfully now as he did two hours ago when he was still in this 'group home' with all the other delinquents. Temperance Brennan knows the dull shock of being abruptly moved with so little warning. Even in the nightmare of a bad placement, battered by abuse and capricious attacks, there is still routine, some knowing of what to expect next. (More violence, of course.)

This release is unexpected.

He is uncertain.

Walking towards her, his bleak eyes sweep her face with doubts, with a hard edge of emerging anger as he holds on to what he _hopes_ but knows is not true. It can't be, it's too soon for good news but he hopes all the same.

Because the alternative is ... well, it's what he's going to have to face.

She won't lie to him.

Temperance Brennan has been lied to by those she loved and all the 'protection' and platitudes they offered as later excuses did nothing but gouge her even more deeply with betrayal. It won't be easy for either of them, but she will not lie to Seeley Booth.

For now, however, before the anger there is relief that he's out of this vile placement. She steps close, placing her arms gently across his shoulders and pulling his stiff and resisting frame closer than it has been in over three months. They have not been allowed to touch in all that time so now what she wants is to wrap herself around him like a living bandage. Brennan wants to squeeze hard, bury her face in his neck and feel him wrapping around her, too. Only one of his arms comes up, however, an auto-pilot effort at going through the motions of a returned embrace.

The tension, the painful, taut tension is achingly familiar and yet devastatingly foreign because it's in the wrong body. This should be her. She is used to it, can handle it, has handled it and she would willingly take it on, take it all on his behalf. Grief for him snarls in her throat.

_It's all over now,_ she wants to tell him. _You're going home._

But that would be a lie.

It's not over.

He's never going home again.

As his embrace finally tightens she senses it's because he's holding fast to that one last hope. A graveled whisper in her ear begs for the comfort of a lie, one that he desperately wants to hear: that the truth is what has set him free. "How did Caroline manage this?"

That question is what pulls her away, resigned to complete the task at hand. There's that hope, faint and dying in his eyes as she keeps her vow and exposes her own betrayal. "It wasn't Caroline."

The hardening in him is instantaneous. His pupils, bitter black. His sabled jaw bristling with ferocious stubble. The anger, how it throbs between them and this is something that she recognizes, too. There is no hope in a world where friends fail, where justices dies, where family betrays.

Anger is all that remains to cover the hurt.

"You promised." It's so bleak, so broken and grating like gravel.

_"You promised we'd stay together, Russ."_ Temperance Brennan doesn't make promises and this is why. Broken promises are lies and she will not lie to someone she loves.

"You ordered me not to. There's a distinct difference." (Also, she has never been one to follow orders.)

His brows are scudding low over a darkened face and she shivers in the shade. Booth pushes past her and walks away.

Slowly.

Brennan sweeps one last look over the 'group home' that has housed her husband for the last three months. Where he goes next will be better than this place but she knows, all too well, that it won't be home. Over the last three months she has done everything within her power to make it so with the full knowledge that there will be no appreciation for her efforts. This anxious fluttering in her breast is most unpleasant, might even be fear because in her bones she knows he's right to be angry with her. With everything. It is justified. Biting her lip, she turns and trots to the heavy door swinging shut behind his exit, pushes beyond it and looks up as she returns to his side. His face is a barren rock, hard and lifeless.

His gait slow and labored.

"You can barely walk."

"I'm fine." It's a snap, defensive. He walks faster after that. The pronounced pain of his every step jars against her own spine. She hates the way he's limping and trying to cover it up (not that she hasn't done the same at times).

"You..." As he falls quiet at that, she thinks he's too angry to muster words but then he does and they are not quite what she expects. "You said you would prove me innocent."

No, that was not a promise either, only a hope. Brennan shakes her head, having given up on that possibility weeks ago. "There isn't enough time for that so I got you out another way."

They are walking through a corridor that leads outside and he pushes through another door, almost heedless of the woman striding beside him. "By blackmailing _them_? It's too dangerous."

"Brady isn't going to say anything, Booth." Being well-prepared and thorough is her stock-in-trade which means Brennan put immense effort into fine-tuning her first attempt to employ extortion. Entering the Brady's office with photocopies of the paper trail Foster had amassed, she'd left the corrupted federal prosecutor in little doubt that his own life would be forfeit if he so much as _breathes_ in the wrong direction. That she will know if he does and the documents hanging over him like the Sword of Damocles will tumble in an automated fatal free-fall the moment any harm befalls her or anyone connected to her.

Mutually Assured Destruction makes an excellent deterrent strategy.

_"I feel confident you'll opt to save your own life."_

Brady's completely sane and self-serving decision to drop the murder charges for lack of evidence does not clear Booth's name, but at least it gets him out of prison.

That is the only thing that matters, getting Booth to safety. A safer house than the last one.

"Come on, you don't know that, okay? They actually think that they cleaned everything off of Angela's computer." Tossing another glare her way, Booth exposes what has him so angry. "You showed our hand."

A gambler never gives his cards away. A sniper never reveals his position.

In challenging Brady, Brennan has done both. Even if the prosecutor keeps quiet, the powerful enemies trying to cover their tracks with Booth's destruction might guess at why he has been released from prison unharmed instead. They might come after him another way, or her, or someone else they love.

Knowing she may have sacrificed their advantage does not change her decision, however, because she sees it as acceptable risk. After the beating Booth has received and the fourth push-back on a trial date, Brennan knows what 'they' are planning: keep delaying until he's dead. She can't afford to take chances on her husband's life, _that_ is unacceptable. "So we'll work faster to find whoever is running this conspiracy."

Still furious, he challenges her strategy. "Okay, great. Did you get anything off of Cooper's remains yet? Do we know how he died? Anything?"

As if he knew her answer would be next to nothing. (So far.)

"Hodgins and Clark are trying to clean the bones now."

"_'Trying'?_" The jeer, the disgust ... she's been on the receiving end before yet it's the bitter lack of faith that is a harsh jab to her heart. Brennan finds it difficult to determine whether he is protecting her or himself as the rant rumbles on and Booth storms away from her. "Okay, I— I don't believe this."

"Stop, Booth. Just _stop_." The small scabbed-over gash on his brow draws her eye and it's just a small reminder of numerous other wounds she suspects but can't yet prove. The beatings have gotten worse inside, she knows this. They accelerate as reputation spreads and allies scatter, leaving the pariah alone and undefended. How could he think she would leave him in there just to save her own skin?

How could he think she would not do anything and everything to save her own heart?

Fiercely, she attacks because it's the only way to shove him back. To make him see what _she_ is afraid of, that he may be brave enough to take it but she isn't. "You were going to _die_ in there!"

The rage spills out and she hears herself in the reverberation. "I can take care of _myself_."

"No, not in _jail_, you couldn't. Not a federal agent. They kept pushing your trial back to keep you in there, so—"

So he would die.

"That's not the point," he cut in, deeply.

Yes it _is_. _It is._ The fear of him being mistreated, tortured, taunted, beaten, has driven her for months. The terror of him dying, shived in the showers or beaten to death in his cell, has been eating away at her for days, ever since the last postponement, and this morning's visit has only confirmed her worst nightmares. The wave of anger breaks, receding as grief over what he's already suffered washes through her. She _knows _what he's trying to hide.

"I'm not gonna keep fighting with you about this. If it were me in there, you would have done the same thing. You _know_ that that's true." A part of her wonders if this is how Booth felt all those years ago when she would stubbornly refuse help, taking on risks while he frantically tried to give her help she swore she didn't need.

Possibly her challenge, infused as it is with fear and love, is what finally moves Booth. He won't quite meet her eyes but goes more than half way all the same. "Look, we're gonna have to move fast now."

Relieved, she agrees to the truce. "Fine. It's not the first time that's the case." After ten years of partnership this is only slightly more challenging than their other worst case scenarios. Her heart is still pounding, still afraid, and she thinks his might be pounding in synchrony. Moving towards the driver's side of their car she adds, "I have an encrypted laptop for you with all the information Angela decrypted from the chip in Wesley Foster's nipple ring. I assumed you'd want to get right to work when you got home."

She had assumed — correctly, it seems — that he would be furious and driven because of the risk she's taken to get him out.

Booth's angry question catches her in the center of her throbbing heart. "Home? Where is that now, exactly?"

This is what she has been bracing herself for: the moment he asks.

Giving him an address in Virginia causes Booth to pause and watch her enter the SUV while his thoughts catch up to what the difference means. He climbs in just as stiffly and awkwardly as he's been moving all day. "What happened to our old house?"

Briskly, she starts the engine and avoids his eyes. "It's up for sale."

~Q~

_**1992**_

"What happened to our old house?"

The woman driving turned her head briefly to answer her passenger. "Well it's on sale, of course."

Tempe Brennan bit her lip and nodded. "What happened to my things that they made me leave there?"

"Sold or donated, I presume."

"So I don't get to keep anything?" A bedspread she'd had since she was two, stuffed animals, posters, pictures, half of her clothing. He mother's jewelry, china dishes from her grandparents, the VCR tapes containing her father's favorite old movies ... it was all lost. The promise that she could come back later to get the rest was nothing but a lie to get her out of her house more quickly.

"You're starting a new life, Temperance. You don't need those old things. The Clausens are a fine family, you're very fortunate..."

Tempe lifted logical eyes and pinned the platitude right back where it belonged. "If I were truly fortunate, I'd still be at _home_ with my own family."

Mrs. Castile's mouth hardened. The three seconds it took her to answer seemed three times longer than that, a cruel and painful quiet. "This is your new home. Try to make the best of it."

A new home? She didn't even know where she was going so how could it possibly be home.

Outside the car's window Tempe watched larger business buildings giving way to suburban homes, reaching further and further back into time as they entered a mid-century neighborhood filled with 'ranches and ramblers.' Most of the low-slung houses sprawled in blocky lines that she did not like because they bore no resemblance to her parents' charming post-war cottage. These houses looked empty and cold, and not just because it was January in Chicago.

A few more turns and Mrs. Castile slid to a stop in front of a slightly different house perched on a corner.

It was a lovely building, elegant in an oddly angular way — a sprawling tumble of rectangles and squares. Upon exiting the car and walking up to the 1950s "modern" home, Tempe noted it was low, lined, clean, surrounded by sculpted shrubbery and well-placed stones. Even the bricks were sleek, staggering in alternating rows along the side edges of the entry. The doorbell chimed musically and a moment later both of the centered door knobs rotated just before the doors swept inwards.

"Oh, you're here!"

A middle-aged woman, rather short with neatly clipped hair, stepped backwards to invite Tempe and her case worker into the foyer. As the teen girl's eyes took in the furnishings, she furrowed her brow in confusion. The clean angular lines were stepped out of time — neither 'mod' nor modern, nor easily dated to any point in between — and before she could think better of it Tempe had blurted out a question.

"What kind of furniture is this?"

"Temperance!" Mrs. Castile gave a sharp rebuke but the woman who would be her new 'mother' simply laughed.

"Oh, it's okay. The furniture style is Danish. My husband is from Denmark. Do you like it?"

Taking in the details now, how softer fabrics softened the harsh perpendicular lines, Tempe wondered if the seats would be comfortable to sit in. This all looked stiff and formal to her, not like the soft sofas she'd gladly sunk into with her brother, Russ, on 'old movie night' with their parents. Unable to imagine relaxing, Tempe turned away. "It's not the same as at my house."

She did not like it.

She did not want to sit there.

An uncomfortable pause, then the new mother shrugged and smiled brightly. "Well, I'm sure your house was lovely. Perhaps you could tell us about it at dinner. For now, would you like to see your room?"

Now she hesitated, suddenly nervous at the prospect of having to stay here. Alone.

"I'll just go out to the car and get your things, Temperance." Providing no help at all Mrs. Castile turned towards the door, leaving Tempe alone with this hospitable stranger.

Torn between sticking with the familiar (awful though it was) and going somewhere wholly foreign, Tempe stalled in the hallway. She just wanted to go home.

"It's okay," the new mother said. "Your room is this way."

Down a long corridor to a room at the back, with the mother running on at the mouth all the way. "This is your bathroom but you'll have to share it with company so please try to keep it tidy. I'm sure you will..." Tempe caught only a brief glimpse of teak and teal before being shepherded further backwards. "...the laundry room. This is our room..." It was a closed door, so she had no idea what lay beyond it. "... and this is your room. I hope you like it."

The door stood open and the mother walked into a fairly large and bright room painted Prussian blue. There was a clothes dresser, white desk and daybed, just as sleek as all the rest of the house. It was clean and pretty in here but somewhat sterile, like a hotel room. "It's nice," Tempe found herself saying, as if genuinely admiring some other girl's good fortune.

"We didn't know what color you liked," the mother explained. "But this is pretty, isn't it? I always wanted a room like this when I was a girl."

Not knowing if she should answer the question or offer a remark about the mother's long-ago desire for a room like this one, Tempe bit her lip and offered a rather vague agreement. "Yes. Um, I like green."

"I'm sorry?" The furrowed brow on the mother's face signaled confusion.

"You ... you said you don't know my preferred color. It's green."

"Oh." There was a painful kind of stare while the mother tried to figure her out. Tempe was used to this, yet surprised by the question. "Do you want to paint it green in here?"

Hardly daring to wonder if they actually would change the color just to suit her, she quickly shook her head to indicate a negative reply. "No, this is fine. I like blue, too."

"Here you are," Mrs. Castile interrupted, hauling in three Glad trash bags stuffed with everything Tempe still called her own. She tossed them unceremoniously onto the floor of the new bedroom, right on top of a deep blue woven carpet.

"Would you like me to help you unpack," the new mother asked.

"No." A warning flash of the case worker's eyes had Tempe stumbling for a correction. "Um, no thank you. It won't take long."

"I need to tell you a few things about Temperance's history. Why don't we just leave her alone for a while." Mrs. Castile guided the mother out and the door shut.

For a moment, while their voices faded, she could hear Mrs. Castile explaining that Temperance Brennan was an excellent student, well-behaved if not a little eccentric. The only reason she'd been in the group home was the need for emergency placement due to her missing parents, well respected middle class professionals who had probably been murdered in a carjacking. In other words, Temperance Brennan was a safe bet as far as foster kids went, unlikely to cause trouble.

Of course, Mrs. Castile didn't tell the mother about all the things that had happened to Tempe since Christmas, terrible things that had changed her into something more closely resembling a typical, damaged foster kid. Her ribs and back still ached from the blows and sitting for long periods of time was quite uncomfortable. The bruises she hid under her clothes were still livid weals of purple and green.

Stiffly, Tempe bent her knees and crouched over her belongings. None of the clothing was folded and it all came out of the plastic smelling faintly fumy. The smell gave her a headache, probably because the polyethylene plastic was derived from ethylene gas that had been formed into polymers: a long chain of hydrocarbons.

It didn't take long enough to unpack and within fifteen minutes she had nothing else to do. Tempe toyed with the idea of doing laundry so she could rid her clothing of the trash-bag smell. To that end she gathered up a bundle and trundled it back to the laundry room the mother had pointed out and got as far as placing it into the washing machine, but then her eye fell upon the detergent. It was Tide and her mother used All. Realizing that her clothes still would not smell like home, Tempe felt tears washing over the wavering washing machine.

She thought about taking all the clothes back out again and letting the garbage bag smell remain after all.

_This is irrational,_ she told herself bitterly. _Tide smells fine._

The washing machine and dryer were mustard brown; the walls were white instead of concrete and there was a single cupboard rather than shelves and this was on the main level instead of the basement. This place was nice (much nicer than the group home or even her parents' house) but it wasn't her home. She wiped tears away, resolving to 'make the best of it.' Determined now, she measured a dose of detergent and puzzled out the washer's settings, then retreated to the Prussian Blue room.

The bedspread was white so Tempe sat on the floor, afraid to soil it. With her knees pulled up to her chest, she gazed around herself and tried to imagine the best place for her one remaining treasure. The wooden box had been her mother's, and all that remained inside was a precious pair of earrings, an old folded advertisement taken from a magazine, a few photos. Making up her mind at last Tempe rose and placed the box carefully on a little table next to the bed where it would be quick to grab in the night.

Now that she was completely unpacked and the polyethylene bags disposed of Tempe had nothing to do but lay down on the blue rug and wait for time to pass.

At dinner the mother noticed Tempe wasn't eating much. "Don't you like it?"

The food was fine, a small part of her brain had even decided it tasted good, but the rest of her couldn't relax enough to eat. A clattering spoon in the serving dish made her jump and Mr. Clausen's harshly accusing voice startled her.

"Why are you so nervous?"

They would sneak up on her sometimes, the ones planning an attack. Tempe would be sitting quietly in the common room, reading, and the only warning was a soft shuffle or clatter before the first slap. Sometimes it began with a punch or shove, always unexpected, because Tempe had grown up in a safe home where violence never happened and consequently she didn't know how to guard against it. Not at first.

She learned quickly.

"Now Peter, don't worry. Mrs. Castile assures us she comes from good people."

"Ja, but she's been in with the bad ones; who knows what she's become now."

Withdrawn, that was what she had become. For one unguarded moment she looked at the father and considered telling him about the fights (mostly lost, until Tempe had begun to learn self defense through trial and error) but ... she sensed there would be no sympathy. Given his preexisting suspicions, admitting to fighting likely would not be perceived well and that would only make things worse for her here.

At home, she would have said something. Here, there was the question of why she had become so hyper-alert and whether that constant state of arousal would continue to be necessary. "I'm tired," Tempe decided. And she was, exhausted from the non-stop vigilance that couldn't stop here, either. It was a good answer, difficult to disprove and vague enough to cover nearly any lapse in decorum.

"Well then you should go get some sleep after you clean the kitchen," the mother soothed. "We'll get you registered in school first thing tomorrow morning."

A new school, the third one since starting her sophomore year. Tempe nodded, feeling her heart thud in fear at the prospect of people looking at her and knowing where she'd been. (A group home, where the 'bad kids' go.)

Taking her plate to the kitchen, she startled again when the father made a request. "Please be careful with those dishes. They're antique."

"Okay," she agreed, wondering why they used priceless porcelain for an ordinary dinner. Was tonight some sort of special occasion? "I'll be very careful."

The mother spoke up again, softening the father's harsher worry. "We're very happy to have you with us. We want you to feel at home here."

Nodding vaguely in reply — she could not return the sentiment — Tempe walked away, trying to sort out the meaning of things. Warm smiles, a beautiful bedroom, good food on fancy dishes, as if they were celebrating her arrival. But she didn't feel like celebrating; being here was nothing to be happy about.

"Why are you moving so slow?"

She was bruised all over, something these people could not know because they would ask why and then she would have to talk about the fights. Tempe forced herself to move faster, ignoring the pain as she pushed herself into the kitchen and began washing the dishes.

~Q~

_**Sept 2014**_

The view from the street reveals a low, mid-century home built of slender red brick and walled-in with courtyard gardens. From the outside it seems an impenetrable fortress, one that lets in light but not bullets or prying eyes. The high, crenelated windows reminded her of a castle keep when she first stepped foot inside with a real estate agent and she wonders if it does for Booth as well.

_A man's home is his castle._

She wants him to feel safe in here.

He eases himself through the door with the same kind of caution a much younger Temperance Brennan had brought into that long ago house. Though he likes old things, Americana, taking this house without his input has posed something of a risk. She's not confident of its reception and anxiously awaits his reaction.

All of his things, as many as she could gather and rescue, have been cleaned and placed in every room because she wants him surrounded by home. This, more than architecture, is what has captured his attention. Booth stands almost at the center, taking it all in with cautious turns of his head and she can't decipher what that blank expression means.

Finally, hopefully, she asks. "What do you think?"

Off by the fireplace, pain darts through his bleak eyes that stay affixed to a bullet-pierced piece of polished metal. Twin holes puncture it, polished into it for all the world as if they'd always been there. He reaches a reverent finger to touch one of the violations, feeling the metal dipping down into ragged edges where the alloy gave way.

It's wounded like he is.

"You kept all these."

~Q~

_Two weeks after the battle in their home it still stinks of cordite and dust. Thick clots of dust cover splintered wood, choking the air when she accidentally dislodges some and coating her boots as she picks her way carefully over the debris that was once a beautiful house._

_"There's not much we can salvage here." This is Sweets saying so, his subdued tone revealing carefully controlled emotion. This place was his home too, during the six months he lived with them._

_Light slants inward like leaning towers, illuminating dust, mostly. Her whole life is buried here in the rubble, broken and filthy. Against a wall at the back of the entrance hallway she spies a glint of grey, almost shiny and Brennan wades towards it. At some point she has begun to cry, she's not sure why but thinks it has something to do with this nearly whole piece of refuse that has fallen to the ground._

_Kneeling, heedless of the dust disturbed and tumbling over her as she carefully brushes it clean, she sees the two, new holes. It was shot, just like he was. Tears streak down her cheeks as she tenderly reaches for her husband's whatever-it-is (she's never really known)._

**_2008_**

"Hey, Bones, you're early. I'll be right out."

Booth left her standing at the entrance to his small and very cluttered living area as he hustled back to his bedroom. "I just gotta grab my jacket and we can go."

After three years of partnership, this was the first time she'd ever come inside of her partner's apartment and Brennan decided she wouldn't restrain her curiosity. It was like a very cluttered and uncurated museum in here. Most of the items she recognized as useless leftovers from an earlier era but one thing, in particular, baffled her. It was hanging over an old roll-top desk, quite large on the wall but, she sensed, light in weight.

A riveted metal _something_, hanging on the wall. It looked almost like a door or a piece of something larger.

"What is that?" She pointed as he walked back in, drawing his attention to the object hanging so prominently that it must be important. Anthropologically, people hang things of significance or value, the display denoting status, power, or (in Booth's case, she strongly suspected) sentimentality. He'd hung it so it must mean something.

He glanced over at it and shrugged. "I don't know."

That, she found quite surprising.

Stepping even closer to study it carefully, Brennan decided, "It looks like part of a fuselage." A piece of an old airplane, perhaps?

"Maybe." Clearly, Booth did not care. "The FBI had it in the property warehouse for a long time and they were going to dump it, so..."

So he'd rescued it? Most puzzling.

"Why did you keep it, if you don't even know what it is?"

Booth shrugged again, wearing a warm little smile that told her some mysteries will never be solved. "I like it."

Liking things that no one else saw any reason to bother with, that was Booth all over. A born rescuer.

~Q~

_It's difficult to lift the fuselage out from under a collapsed beam. Rescuing this stupid piece of garbage has become imperative and she is fighting both sobs and sawdust as she wrenches the thing loose._

_"Hey, leave it. It's just trash." Sweets has come closer but doesn't seem to understand the value of things. How could anyone possibly understand what this means.  
><em>

_"No, it's Booth's! He'll want it. He never throws anything away."_

_**2012**_

"Why are we taking this, Booth? You don't even know what it is."

"It's a ... thing." He grinned, lifting his still unidentified metal prize down off the wall carefully and holding it up for admiration that was not forthcoming. "Come on, Bones. If you get to take that statue with the pointy boobs I get to take this."

"It's a Bamana gwan figure, highly prized in Mali for centuries by women who are unable to conceive."

Booth laughed, eyeing her very rounded belly with pride. "Clearly, you managed fine without it."

From within her, the baby kicked in response to her father's laughter and Brennan brought her hands up to cradle her fetus automatically. "That's not why I wish to keep it. The matriarchal statue has value because it's old."

"So does this," Booth told her then, quietly. "When I look at it, I see something worth keeping."

But he was looking at _her_, his eyes warm and loving as they have always been. For years, when he looked at her, she'd felt the warmth of being valued. Once he loved something Booth never gave up on it. Tears sprang to her eyes, the gushing sentimentality caused by pregnancy most likely. She cursed the hormones but part of her sensed she might have cried anyway when he set his treasure aside and pulled her into his arms.

"Why do you love me, when I'm so difficult."

"I just do."

"I love you, Booth." They stood still, both absorbing the baby's bumpy little kicks. Brennan sniffled. "But I really don't like that thing, it's ugly."

"Right back atcha," he chuckled. He hated the statue, this she knew. "How about if I hang my metal monster in the hallway so you can just walk right past it and pretend it isn't there?"

"That ... sounds acceptable. I will place the Bamana statue in the hallway as well."

"Upstairs," he insisted. "I don't want people gawking at her boobs."

"Booth, she's a nursing mother. Breastfeeding is perfectly natural..."

~Q~

_Finally Sweets sees that she won't give up. He reaches for the beam obstructing its extraction and lifts, allowing Brennan to pull her treasure out of the rubble at last._

_Together, they gaze down on filthy metal, noting dings, dents and two prominent holes. "It's damaged," Sweets says._

_"He loves damaged things." Booth loved her when she was damaged, when she didn't know what home was, when she thought home was a building with familiar things inside._

_**Sept 2014**_

So yes, she kept it. Everything she could salvage Temperance Brennan pulled from the ashes of their previous existence and lovingly washed, polished, restored. She has hung them everywhere, surrounding Booth with all the familiar things that were his and hers and theirs, together. She's trying to bring him home.

"You love them. The damage doesn't take that away."

_I love you._

It's in her eyes, thick in the air between them. She loves him, she absolutely does. She did all of this for her partner, to give him the loving home he deserves.

The damage doesn't matter, all the pain he's trying to hide. She just wants him to feel that he belongs here with her. That's why it's here on the fireplace, right where he can look up and see it every night. Anthropologically, hanging something in a prominent location denotes its value, that the item enjoys high status.

It almost seems he understands her intent when he looks at the metal refugee from his former life. "Never forget, right?"

He sighs, his hand dropping away from the damage and tries to sound grateful about the house that isn't his. "It's great. It's amazing, Bones. Really, it—"

Earnestly, she blurts it out, the other unspoken thing that he must be worried about. "And I know how you are, Booth. I didn't just use my money. I spent some of yours, too. A lot, actually."

This is _ours_, she wills him to understand. Not just mine, ours. Our home. Your home.

Deflecting, he sighs. "There's really not much to spend."

Her worry finally seems to reach him. Booth squares his shoulders, clearly preparing to 'make the best of it.' "Thanks. I love it."

It isn't home.

He glances around. "Where's the laptop?"

But someday soon it will be.

~Q~

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><p>Thanks for reading.<p> 


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